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Author and journalist A’Lelia Bundles currently is at work on her fifth book, The Joy Goddess of Harlem: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a biography of her great-grandmother, to be published by Scribner. As president of the Madam Walker/A’Lelia Walker Family Archives, she shares the history of her famous ancestors through speeches, publications, memorabilia, documents and several public initiatives.

Her critically-acclaimed, best-selling biography, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker [Scribner/2001], has been optioned by Zero Gravity Management for a television series starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. The book was named a 2001 New York TimesNotable Book, a 2002 Borders Books-Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, the 2001 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize winner by the Association of Black Women Historians for the best book on black women’s history, a 2002 Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and a 2001 Go On Girl! Book Club selection. The first truly comprehensive account of Ms. Bundles’s great-great-grandmother’s life, this nonfiction book is based on nearly three decades of her meticulous research in the libraries, historical societies, courthouses and private homes of more than a dozen U. S. cities. Her young adult biography, Madam C. J. Walker: Entrepreneur [Chelsea House 1991/revised 2008] received an American Book Award. Madam Walker Theatre Center: An Indianapolis Treasure (Arcadia Publishing, 2013), is a pictorial tribute to the National Historic Landmark where three generations of the women in her family served as executives.